You Are Not Prepared! - Early Thoughts on the Black Widow Deck for Marvel Champions

I love the new Marvel Champions Living Card Game (LCG) from Fantasy Flight Games. You might have gathered that from the post I did talking about teaching the game to my dad. Well, FFG recently showed off some of the cards in the upcoming Black Widow hero deck, currently scheduled to release in April. The more I play this game, the more I want to dig in deep into all aspects of this game, so let’s take a look at the released images. Note that I have not yet read the FFG article where the images debuted as I wanted to capture my initial thoughts of seeing the cards.

(Pictures taken from FFG’s post)

First things first, we have Black Widow’s alter ego: Natasha Romanoff. Just like Tony Stark, she starts with a hand size of 6 and 9 hit points. I really wish they’d alter those numbers by one, because all I see is 69, which is nice. Now that we have 2 characters with these stats, it seems like going forward that 6 cards/9 HP is going to be the golden standard for “Non-powered” Heroes - those heroes that are just ordinary humans that are “Super” through tech, advanced training, or some other means. With Nat’s “Mission Prep” ability, we start to understand that her deck is going to be focused on getting “Preparation” cards played. Which begs the question: do we have any Preparation cards up to this point, or are they all coming in this pack/future packs? (Standby while I go look this up). Apparently there aren’t any up to this point.

Flipping over to the hero side, Black Widow’s “Widowmaker” ability makes it even more obvious how to play her deck. Her native stats remind me of Captain America’s stats with 2 Thwart, 2 Attack, and 2 Defense. To me, it makes her seem like a balanced hero that you can build to either be really good at Fighting, Thwarting, or decent at both. She seems like a very versatile character that will be great in 3 or 4 player games where you can quickly switch up tactics to help out opponents that need a hand.

Ok, so Black Widow wants to play a lot of preparation cards in both hero/alter ego mode. So what do some of these preparation cards do? Next on our preview we have Agent Coulson and Counterintelligence. Counterintelligence seems like a standard filler card, one of those card that you know you need in your deck to help with some threat. Yet, it feels like most of the time the card will get used for some other effect, like A) paying for another card or B) triggering Black Widow’s preparation abilities. Agent Coulson confuses me a bit. Are preparations cards going to continue to be a thing in the future? If he was a Black Widow specific card, his ability would make more sense to me. As a Justice card, however, I’m not certain whether or not I’d use him in a non-Black Widow deck. Besides, it seems like you’d want Coulson in your Black Widow deck regardless of whether or not you are playing Justice.

Speaking of Black Widow specific cards, how about that Widow’s Bite? First of all, as someone who plays Iron Man a lot, I’m super excited to have another character with Tech cards. When I’ve gotten out Stark Tower and can pull Tech cards out of the discard pile, some times there are turns when its not beneficial for me to use the ability on myself and I’d love to be able to use it to help out my fellow players. I’m also never not going to like abilities that let me deal damage to minions as soon as they come out. However, I’m kinda bummed its just a single use item. Being super cheap, it is an easy card to get out (and trigger her special abilities), but a part of me wishes that it was more expensive and had charges on it instead. Although i’m sure once I play Black Widow I’ll like the fact its so cheap and easy to throw out.

Lastly, every hero is only as good as their villain. There is no doubt in my mind that using Taskmaster as Black Widow’s nemesis, not to mention her deck releasing in April has to do with the MCU Black Widow movie coming out in May. Considering all the upgrades that Black Widow gets for her abilities, having Taskmaster come out immediately changes the game, as you could easily get hit for 3+ damage/scheming depending on how early or late in the game you are at. As for Burn Notice, her obligation card, I’m not really surprised at anything here. Everything on here seems pretty standard for what we’ve seen for Obligations up to this point.

There are some quick thoughts on Black Widow’s deck. No matter what, i’ll be picking it up and trying it out for myself, but are y’all? Let me know in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. Also, they showed off the playmate for Black Widow, teasing that it would be releasing alongside the hero deck, but does anyone think that will actually happen? Has FFG ever released a playmat the same time that a product has come out?